SCREEEEE—.
The object in the hand of the man who had attacked our campsite was a Signal Flare.
No, why the hell did he have something like that?
That item didn't exist in the game!
SLAP.
I smacked my cheek before my brain could freeze and forced myself to focus. The Druid was already staring blankly at the red light rising high into the sky.
“Get a grip!”
“Huh? Ah!”
“Get a grip and pack our things first!”
I lifted the canvas of the collapsed tent. The iron rod that had served as its ridgepole was already bent in the middle. I rolled only the sleeping bag into the backpack and retrieved the machete.
By the time I emerged from the tent, the Druid was throwing dirt over the campfire to extinguish it.
‘Should I really keep traveling with those two?’
I hesitated.
We weren’t companions who had agreed to stay together, and I had no reason to be chased by the Hunters with her. Come to think of it, we hadn’t even exchanged names.
I considered what would benefit me most.
She was a Druid with an allergy to either cats or fur. Every Druid who appeared in the game came with a fully grown beast. That meant each one could pull their own weight the moment they joined the party.
But could these two pull their own weight?
If that wildcat—that black panther—had been fully grown, I would’ve gladly helped the Druid. No, it probably would’ve been the one helping me. Among the beasts commanded by Druids, black panthers were easily top tier.
But right now, it was only a kitten that looked incapable of defeating even a single Common Goblin.
THWACK.
The Druid brought her staff down on the head of the Hunter who had fired the Signal Flare.
“What are you doing?”
“H-He moved!”
“Right. Sure.”
I found it difficult to believe that a man with an axe blade buried halfway into his upper body was still alive.
Was she simply taking revenge for what he had done to her?
For a girl who had trembled after her first kill, she was surprisingly brutal. Was this the dignity of a native of this world?
Terrifying.
The Druid finished her revenge and cleaned up the campsite, then met my gaze.
“Druid.”
A firefly-like light bloomed from the tip of her staff. It wasn’t bright enough to dazzle me, but it provided enough light to distinguish the stones directly ahead.
It could serve as a torch.
The glow illuminated her face and the wildcat in her arms.
Its fur was still standing on end. Had it fought in its own way?
Ridiculous.
Fine. If you hadn’t woken me, that axe would’ve struck me in the middle of the night and sent some part of my body flying.
“What’s your name?”
“Rion Malekis.”
“My name is Kain Orsheda.”
“…….”
“I’m a Warrior. I can fight reasonably well, and I have several of the magic jars I used earlier today. What can you do?”
“I’m a Druid. I can use Green Magic and command a Wind Spirit.”
What a relief.
Spirit arts.
So she wasn’t a Druid who relied entirely on beasts. It seemed she could pull her own weight after all.
“Let’s move first.”
We ran with the green orb of light Rion had created floating ahead of us.
“I’ll carry that creature.”
I took the wildcat from Rion’s arms and held it against my chest as I ran. This way, even if the Purification effect ended, she probably wouldn’t become incapacitated immediately.
Perhaps understanding that as well, she handed the wildcat over without complaint.
“How many spells can you cast at once?”
“Only one at a time.”
So she couldn’t cast multiple spells.
That was unfortunate.
“Then can you use spirit arts and magic simultaneously?”
“It consumes a lot of Mana, but I can.”
“What can the Wind Spirit do?”
“It can sense anything within a radius of one hundred and fifty meters, and it can generate some wind.”
“How much wind?”
Whoooosh.
A mass of gray wind appeared beside Rion as she ran. It wasn’t particularly strong. If a fan had weak, medium, and strong settings, this was around medium.
I glanced at Rion’s face as we ran and saw tension there.
I hadn’t expected much from a support-class Druid anyway. No, to be honest, Rion was exceptional for a Druid. Most Druids I had encountered in the game relied entirely on their beasts.
‘Those bastards were PoXmon Masters.’
Their method of taming animals was usually to beat them half to death and then use a mind-control spell. If the taming failed, some simply drove a blade into the creature’s throat.
According to them, if it couldn’t become a friend in nature, it was an enemy.
It wasn’t PoXmon. It was Palworld.
“Rion, will you become my companion?”
A fork in the road appeared ahead. I offered her one final chance to join me. If she refused here, I would hand over the wildcat in my arms and separate from her.
That would be the end of it.
Rion bit her lip and considered the offer before speaking.
“Once one of my people accepts someone as a friend, we do not betray them. Not unless they betray our trust first.”
I knew.
That was why I had continued showing her kindness despite the losses it caused me. During the few days since I fell into this world, I had felt the need for a trustworthy companion with painful clarity.
“Can I trust you? Can you swear it to your god, Ru?”
Ru?
Did she mean a god like the Christian God?
What use was there in knowing a god’s name? They were all the same sort of bastards anyway.
The only gods I knew properly were the Ancient Gods. They had done nothing but scatter foreshadowing until the end, making me think, ‘Oh, these guys are definitely going to be the final bosses later. Haha,’ while I gathered information to find a strategy against them.
‘They were just MacGuffins. As for the other gods, all I knew were the NPC stat bonuses and the skills they gave upon class advancement.’
I recalled the game’s setting. Because this world was so bleak, humans needed transcendent beings they could trust and depend on. Their desperation made them deeply serious about religion.
They were devoted enough to wage wars over the interpretation of a single word in the scripture called ‘Thus Spoke Ru.’
To these people, religion was life itself.
Had she seen the cross necklace I wore and mistaken me for a devout believer?
I had only put it around my neck in case it carried some kind of effect.
“I swear. I swear to Ru that I, Kain Orsheda, will not betray my companion Rion Malekis.”
At that moment, a strange, subtle sensation brushed past me.
It didn’t matter. I didn’t believe in Ru or whatever that fragment of game data was called, and Kain wasn’t even my real name.
“Then I swear as well. I, Rion Emer Malekis, accept Kain Orsheda as my friend and will not betray him.”
“Good. From now on, we’re companions.”
Did she come from a better bloodline than I thought?
She even had Emer as a separate family name.
Not that it mattered right now.
“This way.”
I checked the direction with the compass and took the right-hand path at the fork. Rion gradually began falling behind as her stamina dropped.
She was weaker than I expected.
A Druid should’ve had decent stamina from running through mountains and forests.
“Can your Wind Spirit stop the Tracking Scent from spreading?”
“It can’t block it completely.”
She might be less useful than I thought.
“…Then keep the Tracking Scent from spreading as far as possible.”
“All right.”
I saw Rion communicating with the spirit.
“Kain. Hunters are approaching from the southeast.”
Southeast was the direction of the territory. The men who had been returning after hunting the black panther had seen the Signal Flare and were coming back.
“How many, and how far?”
“Five—no, four people. They’re about one hundred and forty meters away.”
“Tsk. We’re turning west.”
We immediately changed direction and ran west. Since no one used this path, branches and stones kept catching at our ankles.
The Black Forest spread in a fan shape around the territory to the south.
Four Main Portals existed within the forest. The monsters’ territories were divided according to the locations of those portals.
“Two Blade Wolves ahead!”
Just as Rion had warned, two wolves appeared before us.
“I’ll handle them.”
The monsters roaming the Black Forest hunting ground had either been driven out of the main dungeon beyond the portals or had lost territorial conflicts. Most were weaker than the monsters inside the dungeon.
“Move!”
The wolves growled when they saw us running toward them, then lunged. I struck one with the machete and grabbed the other by the scruff before slamming it onto the ground.
Even at a glance, they were either old or undersized wolves. Their fur had fallen out in patches and had no sheen whatsoever.
We left them behind and continued running.
“The Hunters split into two groups. Two of them are chasing us. They’re one hundred meters away.”
Was the other group heading toward the place where the Signal Flare had been fired?
The sun had begun to rise, brightening the surroundings. The path gradually became familiar.
“Rion, ask the spirit to find the nearest portal.”
“I won’t be able to sense anything in the meantime.”
“That’s fine.”
“All right.”
The Wind Spirit floating beside Rion’s ear vanished with a rush. The small current circling the wildcat disappeared as well.
Before long, I saw fragments of wood scattered in the distance. When I raised my gaze, I saw the mountainside.
‘That’s steep.’
The slope looked too sharp for a person to climb on foot.
Come to think of it, had the mercenaries who rode in the wagon with me survived?
While my mind wandered, we reached the wreckage of the stagecoach.
“Hide.”
We concealed ourselves behind the wreckage.
Whooosh.
The Wind Spirit reappeared and whispered something to Rion.
“Kain, it says the portal is about one hundred and fifty meters that way.”
Rion pointed northeast.
Has Wind Spirits always been this convenient? In the game, they had been useful only for elemental attacks.
I could use it as an observer from now on.
“Stop.”
A medium-height man equipped with a mace and shield appeared from the direction we had come, accompanied by a man who kept sniffing the air. Rather than entering the clearing where the carriage had fallen, they stopped beneath the trees.
Were they wary of a possible trap?
Clever bastards.
The man sniffing the air had to be the bloodhound I’d heard about while interrogating the fat man—Corin, the one who could smell the Tracking Scent.
He knocked an arrow onto the bow in his hand.
“Sniff, sniff. They seem to be nearby.”
The bloodhound closed his eyes, moved his head around, and continued sniffing. As I watched him, I called Rion.
“Rion.”
“Yes.”
Rion had already raised the Hand Crossbow and aimed at them.
Forget it.
I had used that Hand Crossbow myself. Its maximum range was thirty meters. Even at a rough estimate, those bastards were around fifty meters away.
‘Trying to snipe them will probably only reveal our position.’
If we could eliminate the archer first, we would have a much greater advantage.
I checked the resources I had.
My life has always been like this.
I never had enough resources, and the problems before me were always beyond my ability. I had survived only by squeezing out every trick and scrap of ingenuity I possessed.
“Rion, can your Wind Spirit make the bolt fly farther?”
“…I think it can add seven or eight meters.”
Shorter than I expected.
Still, it was possible.
Could she perform the method I had just imagined?
It was originally a skill called ‘Wind Path,’ used with a weapon imbued with the Wind attribute.
“Rion, listen carefully and do what I say.”
“All right.”
I searched my memory and recalled the skill effect I had seen in the game.
“Imagine that you’re creating a path with the wind.”
“Imagine that you’re creating a path with the wind.”
“No, don’t repeat my words.”
“No, don’t repeat… ah, uh, right.”
Rion closed her eyes and concentrated, looking embarrassed.
“Imagine that the path connects the tip of the bolt loaded into the crossbow to the Hunter holding the bow over there.”
Whooosh.
The spirit settled onto the tip of Rion’s crossbow. A faint gray path of air extended forward.
“Hm?”
“Hide!”
It might have been invisible without close concentration, but the men watching the area ahead quickly noticed the anomaly. They hurried behind the trees.
Damn it.
We had almost succeeded, but now we had only exposed our position and failed…….
“Whew.”
Rion opened her eyes and pulled the crossbow’s trigger.
WHIZZ—.
The bolt rode along the gray wind she had created.
THUNK.
Following a Wind Path that curved like a question mark, the bolt bent through the air and struck Corin in the head.
‘That actually worked.’
“Cor—”
THUNK.
The next bolt struck the remaining Hunter in the head.
The chase ended far more anticlimactically than expected.
We hid the two bodies in the surrounding bushes. After finishing the cleanup, we arrived before a portal glowing green.
It differed in size alone from the portal leading to the Instance Dungeon where I had been kidnapped. The place the goblins had dragged me into had been a small, event-based dungeon.
What stood before me now was a true main dungeon.
The monsters inside were probably twice as strong as those driven into the Black Forest. We planned to travel around the dungeon’s outer edge, so we were unlikely to encounter high-level monsters.
Still, I couldn’t help feeling nervous.
Four Main Portals existed within the Black Forest. However, they all led to the same main dungeon. That dungeon covered six hundred square kilometers—roughly the size of Seoul—and was divided into four regions.
Our plan was to survive inside for two days until the Tracking Scent faded, then leave through a different portal and return to the territory.
“Let’s go.”
“All right.”
I swallowed dryly and patted Miyu, the wildcat in my arms.
“Purr.”
Unaware of how I felt, Miyu blinked sleepily.
Rion and I stepped into the portal together.
‘Fuck, even if goblins are twice as strong, they’re still goblins.’
Then hundreds of armed goblins came into view.
‘We’re fucked.’
***
[Entering Main Dungeon 1-2 ‘Land of the Greenskins’.]